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This post was written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin. Earlier today, OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein released a new memorandum to agencies directing them to consider and account for the “cumulative” costs of their regulations.  Attacking the cumulative costs of regulation has been a favored tactic among regulated industries and […]

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary committee is marking up the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act (H.R. 4078), which would block virtually any “significant regulatory action”—basically, any step toward promulgating any regulation that has a large economic impact or is otherwise controversial— as long as unemployment is over 6 percent.   Rather than support initiatives that actually help […]

A conventional approach to safety is based on the concept of design events. A building code might say, for example, that a building should be able to survive a 7.0 earthquake. This approach has been basic to the regulation of nuclear reactors. As the interim report of the post-Fukushima NRC task force explains: The regulation […]

Inside EPA is reporting that yet another critical EPA rulemaking is now being delayed indefinitely.  This time it’s the agency’s rulemaking to codify a draft guidance clarifying whether Clean Water Act protections apply to wetlands and other marginal waters. EPA had projected on its online rulemaking gateway that it expected to issue a proposed rule […]

In 1975, Indiana lawmakers joined a small but growing group of state legislatures passing aggressive medical malpractice “reforms.”  Indiana’s law capped damages that victims of medical malpractice can recover at $500,000 and eliminated damages for pain-and-suffering altogether, Frank Cornelius, a lobbyist for the Insurance Institute of Indiana, played a role in helping pass this legislation. […]

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum, the case asking whether corporations can be liable in federal court for violations of international human rights law.  In the decision under review, the Second Circuit – unlike every other circuit court to consider the question – had held that they […]

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has upheld a district court ruling that the federal government is liable for damage from the Katrina storm surge that went up the MRGO canal into the city. As I read the opinion, it is limited in three ways. First, it is […]

On November 7 of last year, EPA sent the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) a rather important proposed rule – one that will, in some way, limit greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.  The Greenhouse Gas New Source Performance Standard for Electric Generating Units for New Sources has now been […]

The BP Oil Spill case settled! Well, part of it. The smaller part. But, still, we must count this a victory for U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, whose reported 72 million pages of assigned reading will inevitably be shaved down. (Does this man have an iPad?) On Friday evening the court announced that BP had […]